By Mrinalini Harchandrai

Zarine Arora thought it was ironic that the name of the store was Iccha.

“Wish,” she translated in a soft breath, repeating the word again and again like a mantra as she waited. She tried to perceive a wish rise within her. But like a birthday cake that comes up flat, it never did. “Wishwishwishwishwish….” She didn’t know what she wanted, which was a new non-feeling sort of feeling. The irony was she always knew — and it would be rare for her to linger as she did in this generic discount store that sold anything from unbranded irons and bottle openers to clothes and lingerie. It was located in the bustling Parla suburban marketplace of Mumbai, five minutes on foot from her apartment. She knew of stores in a more upmarket street that could offer her what she needed. But there was a monsoon cloud of confusion hanging over her, which wouldn’t let her travel too far from home these days.

Right after school, Zarine had left her small-town life, with its small-minded ways, for Mumbai. It wasn’t Amitabh Bachchan, Irrfan Khan or Akshay Kumar, top-tier stars that fronted big-banner productions, who once crawled into the city from an obscure hinterland town, that had inspired her. It was the lights of Priyanka Chopra, Kangana Ranaut and Vidya Balan that glitter-lit her way. Ever since she first read about these gutsy silver-screen queens, who never bowed down to the Indian film industry’s patriarchal pressure, in thumb-worn glossies at the town’s only dentist’s office, she knew that they were her long-lost tribe.

“Madam, we are having many frocks for seven-year-olds,” said the sole salesman at Iccha. He was an enthusiastic man who spoke a common Indo-pidgin English and brought forth an array of bright coloured, frilly dresses onto the glass counter separating them.

“Er, do you have any kurta-pyjamas?” queried Zarine.

In the centre of her lack of surety, she always knew that she hated frocks, and as though on auto-mode she pushed them away from her. Something definitely more sober perhaps, with no frills. The accommodating salesman dove back into the overstocked room at the rear of the store.

Zarine’s personal tastes were a polar difference apart from the briefs she received as a film stylist. Her directors always wanted the outfits to be tighter, more sexy. Think patent leather and frills, one had said to her. Mumbai was overcrowded, the ocean abutting it smelled of sewage, and grabby, perverted hands would reach out of nowhere on its trains. The reality here could be harsh to an outsider but Zarine clung to her job, a churning machine that created tinsel dreams. Being a stylist was just a way for her to get her toehold into the industry. By day she dressed up someone else’s film. And in her free time, she drafted her own script.

The same day she got the funding for her film, she met Kaushik. Partnerships were on the cards under a forward moving star. And in the perfect symmetry of the universe, by the end of the year, she had two babies. One, she named Zora. The other was named after the first. One had Zarine’s name splashed around the Bombay Mirror as the hot new writer-director to watch out for. The other suckled at her breast several times at night, leaving her too bleary-eyed to attend her film launch after-parties.

“Madam, here, kurta-pyjamas, smallest size. Colours are many, which one you want? Pink, blue, orange….”

“No, no… no colour… um… no white… er, do you have off-white?” Zarine asked with some deliberation stemming from not wanting non-white, and yet not wanting white. Colour seemed somehow too… colourful. White was the shade of the dead. She knew because she had dressed corpse roles of all kinds. Off-white was a little less deathly looking. And still appropriate. The salesman was staring at her oddly now.

“Madam… Zora!” The salesman exclaimed.

Zarine panicked inwardly. How did he know? Did they meet before? She was sure they hadn’t. Could he read her mind?

“Zora film, I seen it!” the salesman’s brightness went up a few watts. “You are director, Zarine Arora! Welcome Madam, welcome my shop,” he said most excited to have a celebrity, albeit faded, in his store.

Zarine was taken aback. Not at his sudden excitement, but that someone still recognized her. For the last seven years, after the birth of her two Zoras, she had to put her dreams on hold. She found herself playing with children’s toys to entertain her daughter, wiping a snotty nose, changing diapers, creating meal plans for breakfast, lunch and dinner suitable for a toddler, figuring out pre-schools and schools, followed by PTA meetings, pick-ups and drop-offs to various extracurricular classes and generally getting her internal clock onto a child’s timings. She felt her brain turn into the consistency of baby food. She had no time or energy left to pick up another film project and found her creativity stifled. When she was pregnant, clearly she didn’t know what she was in for since she had little direct experience with child rearing before that. Although there was a lady who would come to the house and do some cooking for her and her husband on occasion, their budget didn’t allow for a nanny. So when Kaushik went out to work, she found herself trapped in a playpen not of her design. It was taboo to admit her real feelings to anyone, even to herself, and the loneliness this brought was bone sucking. Everywhere she turned, motherhood was given sacred status — Mother earth, gau mata, Mother Theresa, mother’s milk, mother’s love. Even in advertisements and films, the mother is the benefic, angelic force that nourishes the family unit or inspires the hero to break his bonds, swim to the surface and vanquish the bad guy. She had to admit, there were moments when she found pleasure in her little daughter who was very camera-friendly. Zarine had lots of iPhone videos to show for it, full of Tarantino perspectives and Fellini shadows. Small consolations.

“Madam, Zora, very nice film. Even I like Goa, going with my family, taking sea bath….” the salesman referred to the oceanside setting of her film, which happened to be a favourite holiday spot for most folks whose lives were entrenched in urban concrete, like Zarine. She loved her occasional breaks in Goa’s coconutty arms with its sauna sands and an ocean that hugged warmly. So much in fact, that she decided to place her story there for the satisfaction of being able to say she’d had the opportunity to work in paradise when receiving her foreign-category Golden Globe. She laboured all through her pregnancy, right till post-production back in Mumbai.  

“Thank you,” she said politely, unsettled with the mixed feelings the compliment stirred up within her. On one hand, Zora the film was an old achievement, a long-ago laurel having outrun its date for such validation. On the other, she was mildly impressed with this salesman. From his circumstances and the below-average quality of his wares, he appeared as the type who would rather see a formulaic potboiler with actor-god of the masses Shahrukh Khan upturning his collar for manly emphasis in every other scene. She couldn’t have imagined that he would have bought the single-screen ticket for her brand of cinema. After all, Zora was a low-budget let’s-art-up-the-blueprint oeuvre that would appeal to the intelligentsia, who weren’t looking to escape their reality which included holidays in Lucerne or Ocho Rios. They didn’t necessarily need a song-and-dance ending.

Zarine fingered the off-white kurta, unconsciously keeping a tab on it so it wouldn’t get lost in the salesman’s chatter about Zora, the film. She wouldn’t allow any good feeling engendered from his positive review that endured after all these years to penetrate her body. This body that couldn’t run away in the middle of the night whenever she wanted because she would not be able to live with herself if she did. Her daughter’s life took hers overnight. While feeling enslaved to Zora’s needs, she watched her own shadow grow. Of course, there was love. Mixed with envy, like bittery coffee in milk. Zora was stepping into the unfettered life that Zarine had unwittingly given up. Her Golden Globe dream was hazed in the city’s smog.

“…When you are making next film Madam, you must make on all these politicians that are spoiling the India…,” the salesman continued, as he started folding some frilly frocks with accustomed hands. 

So when it happened while they were on a family break at the beach, and the fished-out body was there for her and Kaushik to see, Zarine’s legs shook under her and she sank onto the paradise-like sands. Her tears were salted with the sadness that her daughter’s last moments were of suffocation and struggle. It was something she empathized with wholly. She hadn’t been there to reach into the current and pull up Zora for air as she should have. As she always would have.

However, there was another feeling. It was exhaustion, of having carried a weight for so long that was now lifted. She sobbed with tumultuous heaves, possessed by it all, fearful of the obscene lightness this devilish liberation brought.

The local fisherman who had pulled Zora’s body out was joined by his family, who showed up from their coastal hut and surrounded Zarine. They clucked in consoling sympathy, patting her back at the apparent great grief only a mother can know.

“Madam, you are a very powerful. Very, very powerful,” the salesman sounded serious in his earnestness. “Your film, when you make, it can happen in real. How you have shown someone following dream. So many peoples saw your film and they made their dream. This shop, I made after seeing your film.”

This was a compliment bigger than Zarine could have imagined. Why didn’t she come into this shop before and meet what seemed to be her most ardent fan.

“This is why I’m saying, you make a film on catching bad politician and putting in jail, then it will happen in real life also, because so much corruption today. But your film can make a magic.”

Was he really saying what she was hearing? Zarine hadn’t thought about it before. She knew that life imitates art. But yes, why not? If an artist is powerful enough, life can be changed. She thought of influence wielded by world-renowned artists like Banksy or Ai Wei Wei. They were still tame however. She had heard interviews from novelists who sometimes wrote about confronting their characters that had come alive. That did sound terrifying though. What if your creation did come to life? Perhaps there was a story in this somewhere, perhaps her next film could be based on this. As Zarine paid for the off-white kurta-pyjama, her rusty filmmaker motors were whirring into life now.

“Only one thing Madam, I’m wondering,” the salesman asked while handing her the change. “Why you no having happy ending in Zora? Why you make the girl to drown?”

Mrinalini Harchandrai is the author of A Bombay in My Beat, a collection of poetry that explores the soundtrack of the city, personal cadences and jazz poetry. Her poem won first prize in The Barre (2017), she was a finalist for the Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize 2019 and was shortlisted for the Wordweavers Poetry Contest 2019. Her unpublished novel was selected as Notable Entry for the Disquiet International Literary Prize 2019. Her short stories have been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2018 and selected as a Top Pick (2018) with Juggernaut Books, India. Her work has been anthologized in The Brave New World of Goan Writing 2018 and RLFPA Editions’ Best Indian Poetry 2018, and her writing features on several literary platforms.

The banner image is by Tim Marshall and is downloaded from unsplash.com